


There are More Important Things Than a Dress

by mirjegan



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: F/M, Sad times, my working title for this was 'angst wedding'
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-30
Updated: 2016-06-30
Packaged: 2018-07-19 06:59:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7350628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mirjegan/pseuds/mirjegan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's Rosa and Adrian's wedding.</p><p>Amy is alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	There are More Important Things Than a Dress

The DJ was playing a slowed down version of some rock song Amy had never heard, but that Rosa obviously loved. Looking around, Amy could see that most of the people present were in the same situation as her, confused by the choice of music, but going with it for the sake of the couple.

She glanced at the centre of the dance floor. Pimento had just shed the leather jacket he always wore. Rosa spun in to him in a dark purple dress, laughing with an abandonment that she rarely exhibited. Trust Rosa to not wear white to her own wedding.

Amy sat back down at the table that had been reserved for the Nine-Nine. Rosa didn’t believe in having bridesmaids or any kind of wedding party, so she had just grouped everyone together. Her family was at one table, her friends another, and then the Nine-Nine at a third. 

There were eight seats at every table. It was pretty cozy. Of course, the Nine-Nine had only filled six.

Gina was showing off her dance moves to anyone that would watch. Charles was on the phone, presumably calling Genevieve, to tell her all about the food. Terry was chatting up Rosa’s mother, trying to get more information on Rosa’s childhood. By the look on his face, it was working. Hitchcock and Scully were at the buffet, finding everything edible it sight. And Amy was here.

She had picked a dress with pockets for this event, so she could keep her phone on her, in case there was news. There hadn’t been so far. She pushed her hand in her pocket to check again, and brushed against the creased piece of paper inside.

She had stolen the place card almost as soon as she had seen it. The empty spot was one thing, but seeing his name attached to it would have been too much for her. Amy pulled the card out of her pocket, smoothed it out, and ran her fingers over the embossed name.

Jake Peralta

They had caught Jimmy Figgus. He was still alive, in FBI custody, but they weren’t getting anything out of him. The bureau had decided that it was safe for Pimento to come home, as long as he stayed under the radar. Figgus wasn’t actively looking for him, so he was in relatively little danger. Still, he had to be careful. Even this wedding was a relatively secret affair.

Amy had cried when she heard they caught Figgus. Cried, because it had been 3 months of grueling work. Cried, because it meant Rosa could get her happy ending. Cried, because it had been 3 months, and now Jake could finally come home to her.

She had just stopped crying when Terry pulled her in to the captains office and told her that the FBI had decided that Jake and Holt weren’t allowed to come home yet.

She understood the rationale. There were likely still men on the lookout for them. Figgus had likely confided in someone else what Jake had done. No matter how careful they were in New York, they would have been in perpetual danger.

She had sat in the office crying for an hour once Terry left.

It was now one month later. Rosa and Pimento had put off their wedding as long as they could, because they wanted Jake and Holt to be there, but Rosa could never have been described as a patient person. She had settled on setting out a place for each of them instead.

Amy gently folded the place card up again, tucking it in to her pocket with her silent cell phone. Tears were welling up in her eyes, and she hurriedly ducked out of the room and found an abandoned staircase to sit on.

She missed Jake. She missed Jake so much that she sometimes woke up in the night struggling to breathe because he wasn’t next to her. She missed mussing up his hair in the morning so that it was cute and fluffy and took an extra five minutes for him to comb down. She missed solving cases with him, bouncing ideas back and forth. She missed him bringing her dinner when she was too wrapped up in a book to realize it was 9 pm and she hadn’t eaten since noon. She missed his lips pressed against her temple as they watched a movie. She missed his warmth, his smile, the sound of his heartbeat, the way he could always calm her down. He had been gone for four months and she missed him with every fiber of her being.

Amy wiped her hand under her eyes to clear away the tears, and it came away smudged with black. 

The tears were coming faster now, and she wrapped her arms around her legs, hugging her knees to her chest. Normally, Jake would have followed her out and would have had his arm around her by now. Normally, she would have no reason to break down like this.

She felt someone heavily sit down beside her, and their hand awkwardly pat her knee. She looked up through blurry eyes, half expecting her boyfriend to be there. Even though that was impossible. Even though they would have told her.

A tissue was pressed in to her hand and she wiped the moisture out of her eyes. She refocused on her visitor, and frowned when she saw Rosa sitting there with her arms crossed.

“Shouldn’t you be out dancing with your husband?”

“Yeah. I saw you leave though. I also saw you take Jake’s place card earlier and obsessively check your phone.” Amy raised her eyebrows. “What, I’m a detective. I’m observant.” Rosa stared straight ahead as she said this, and then abruptly raised a tissue to dab at her own eyes. It came away damp. Amy knew better than to point this out and simply waited for Rosa to say something else.

“I miss him too,” Rosa whispered, turning to look at her. “The reason I don’t have a wedding party is because I wanted him to be my best man. We’ve been friends forever. It wouldn’t have been right to have anyone else up there. But I wanted him here in some way, so I set out the table. I didn’t think about how it might have upset you. I’m ….. sorry.”

Amy was taken aback more by Rosa’s admission than her apology. She reached out and took her hand, and Rosa squeezed her fingers surprisingly tightly.

“Thank you. I didn’t realize it would upset me so much either.” Amy didn’t want to ruin the moment they had, so that was all she said.

Then, without warning, she burst in to tears.

Her sobs shook her whole body, and she reached to hug herself again, but Rosa beat her to it. She slid closer to Amy and wrapped an arm around her back, and Amy instinctively rested her head on her shoulder for a second before immediately pulling back.

“I don’t want to get your dress wet.”

“Shut up and cry. There are more important things than a dress.”

Her head returned to Rosa’s shoulder and she let all her emotions come out. How much she missed Jake. How helpless she felt, unable to do much work to bring him home. How untethered she was. How she woke up with a pit of loneliness in her stomach every day, and how the pit threatened to swallow her up every night.

She heard Rosa speaking to someone over her head, and started the process of pulling herself back together. Her body still shook, and her eyes still dripped tears, but when she sat up, she could clearly see Charles, Terry, and Gina sitting on the stairs around them. Terry handed her a cup of tea, though she had no idea where he had gotten one. The warmth in her hands helped calm her down immediately.

Charles took her other hand. Gina looked somber for the first time in her life.

“We’re gonna get him back.”

Terry spoke with the utmost conviction, the utmost seriousness, so that Amy couldn’t help but feel a little more hopeful. Gina nodded. Charles looked on the verge of tears himself.

“You got Adrian back for me. Did you really think I was going to not do the same for you?” The fierceness was back in Rosa’s eyes, and Amy smiled at her weakly.

“Our squad looks out for each other. And we need to look out for Jake and the captain. We need to get them back. But we are also here to look out for you, Amy. I don’t want you out here crying alone again.” Terry’s stern look was strangely paternal. Suddenly, with the four of them around her, she realized how much Jake meant to all of them. How much love and friendship he inspired.

And it made her love him even more.

“I want him home soon, okay?” whispered Amy, looking around at her squad, her family, the people who were there for her even when she didn’t know she needed them.

“Sooner than soon,” Charles smiled, and squeezed her hand.

“Nine Nine?”

“Nine Nine!” came the enthusiastic response.


End file.
